4A
Wednesday, April 3, 1996
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Native Americans' protest is evidence of poor judgment
The Native American Student Association plans to stage a protest on April 11 at the Museum of Anthropology. It is their view that certain artifacts, namely skeletal remains, should not be on display in museums, or even in the property of educational institutions on the basis that they have been taken unlawfully from the tribes.
This is wrong. It would appear that Native Americans now have fallen prey to what they have warned others against for many years—ignorance.
Congress has passed the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act, which mandates that all institutions compile an inventory of all artifacts which are in their possession. This inventory then is available to whomever wants to see it. If a link between someone and something on the inventory can be established, the museum is required to turn over those items. The Museum of Anthropology is in full compliance with this act.
"It is not the case that we have anything illegally obtained in our museum," said Alfred Johnson, director of the anthropology museum. "All museums are required to do it, and we are doing it. Most of our collection comes from alumni.
THE ISSUE:
Protest at museum
and we have no control over how they obtained these artifacts.
"Sometimes a farmer will find something in his field while plowing and give it to us. We have undertaken a few expeditions, and when we did it was all legal and sanctioned by tribal authorities."
NASA has chosen blatant political correctness instead of a reasoned look at things. Many crimes have been committed against Native Americans. Yet to engage in the defamation of honored institutions is just as wrong.
Johnson and his staff are not responsible for a crime against humanity. They follow the laws. If there are family members' remains on display in the museum, then they will be returned to their graves.
If Native Americans wish to see more information about their culture in this society, they should not attack the very people whose job it is to teach just such information.
"The breads, quilts and rugs are a part of our cultural heritage," Johnson said. "So are some of the remains."
Let the museum do its job.
TOM MOORE FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Proposal takes the strain off parents footing bill for college
President Bill Clinton has announced a proposal that would allow parents to deduct up to $10,000 for dependents attending college. For families with children in college this would come as a big relief, especially with the cost of higher education skyrocketing. For students at the University of Kansas, this would be helpful with linear tuition hitting soon.
Many Republicans see this as an election-year gimmick that would bring tax relief to only a small portion of the people. However, some Republicans do concede that this also would encourage young people to attend college.
Furthermore, parents would be more willing to help pay for higher education if they could deduct
THE ISSUE:
Tax deduction
some of the expenses
There has been much talk that high-tech jobs will be the savior of the U.S. economy. But these high-tech jobs require education and the cost of this education is higher than ever before. The ability to deduct college expenses will help to defray some of these high expenses.
The cost of higher education adds up when taking in consideration tuition, fees, rent, transportation and food. Very few young people can afford this on their own, and even then, their parents really pay for it. Clinton's plan could take some of the financial strain out of obtaining a college education.
SARBPAL HUNDAL FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Robert Tapley/ KANSAN
Students buy into system and sell themselves short
"I'm back in the underground," a co-worker once bragged to me in total earnest. As he described his new magazine (designed on daddy's Mac, printed at Kinko's and distributed in corporate-owned chain record stores), I simply stared at him in disbelief. It was the dumbest thing anyone ever has said to me.
I was utterly amazed, speechless even, because he could not recognize the obviously dull and depressing truth that his magazine endeavors were as far from the dark depths of the underground as those cutesy cat lover calendars. If your angst and concern is sanctioned by MTV (therefore earning Entertainment Tonight spots featuring Daisy Fuentes), your "movement" is as mainstream and typical as anyone else's.
In today's society, the marketing strategies of clothing and music corporations have made being young qualification enough to be labeled alternative.
And if you are alternative, you are a participant in the subculture. And as history will have us believe, the subculture always has been a threat to the comfort of a society. By clever advertising, many young people today literally have bought into the cult of the underground, which marks its membership with the right 311 sweatshirt and goat beard, pierced eyebrow and Manic Panic hair color.
But this appropriate "look"
lacks a belief system, an unwritten manifesto that is necessary to elicit cultural change. And when there is no intellectual support system to serve as a foundation, the "movement" must face the inevitable truth: it isn't a
The sad reality is that there is no unified cultural movement to be found at the university level.
cultural vehicle at all, but it is a trend.
STAFF COLUMNIST
Our generation as a whole is failing to attract media attention for real concerns regarding social and cultural change. Rather than address legitimate issues, MTV and SPIN magazine — the self-appointed "voice of a generation" — focus on a segment of youth who choose to whine about how the boomers have ruined their economic future and who attempt to shock their parents by wearing thrift-store clothes.
Perhaps these subjects are worthy of discussion, but they are terribly shallow foundations for an alternative ideology.
We have allowed the media to turn us into a generation without a bite. They have labeled us Generation X and slackers, and very few voices have emerged to
protest. Instead, we set our sights on the mall where we buy the new Ralph Lauren flannel shirt and X-girl T-shirt.
We worship the Beat poets and the hippies while we ignore the fact that Nike now is paying William Burroughs' electric bill. We revert to styles of the 1950s and '60s because we can't form a style of our own. We let Bob Guccione Jr. tell the world who we are, and we base our movements on shock value with nothing to substantiate them.
We never protest the inanity of this because our refusal to dissent is another key attribute of our generation.
Despite the many components that form our culture, the old Marxist doctrine remains true—he who holds the economic power rules the societal structure. Corporations control the nation's advertising, and we sit blank-faced in front of the television to absorb our identity.
We need to recognize their flashy dictates for what they are.
Fashion is fun, but it shouldn't be a total statement of who we are.
We definitely should keep the magazines coming, since they are closer to the real voice than the mainstream press will allow. However, we need to get away from the labels and concentrate more on the content.
Leile Bowyer is a Lawrence senior in art history.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Country won't fall if player doesn't stand
To insist that someone swell with jingoistic pride during the playing of the national anthem is ridiculous.
I take issue with Henri Blanc's March 21 editorial on basketball player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf..
The country won't fall apart.
If the man wants to sit down
during the anthem, let him sit.
KANSAN STAFF
The blustery, ill-supported arguments in this editorial seem to come straight out of Pat Buchanan's school of logic: "It's because I say so."
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The claim that faith is irrational is complex and can be backed up with reason, but some professors never give reasons for their wholesale rejection of faith, which suggests they would rather berate religion than model the "reasonableness" they are preaching to students.
Americans want to talk about religion and spirituality but often are afraid to do so in a culture that trivializes their faith. Recent Gallup polls show that more than nine out of 10 Americans believe in God, and four out of five pray regularly.
Our culture of disbelief is a relatively new phenomenon in our history. When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in the early 19th century, he was struck by the depth of religious conviction among its citizens and believed those convictions were vital to the nation's health.
Editors
rarely a part of the public discourse?
If Americans continue to admit that faith plays a dominant role in their lives, why are matters of faith so much important?
They do have a point that in a classroom a "but-the-Bible-says-so" mentality rarely is a good substitute for a rational argument. Yet lurking under the surface of the "no Bible" rule often is a belief that religion is totally irrational, and people who take their faith seriously are some kind of superstitious fanatics who should keep their beliefs secret.
STAFF
COLUMNIST
In The Culture of Disbelief,
Stephen L. Carter writes,
"Too many journalists, too many scholars, too many politicians, indulge in the habit of making offand remarks that treat deep religious convictions as presumptively irrational."
If our country is to have a fruitful dialogue about our moral dilemmas, faith must be returned to its rightful place of honor.
Carter said of
Faith must be part of dialogue if moral crisis is to be soaked
Carter said of our culture of disbelief "religion is like building model airplanes, just another hobby: something quiet, something private, something trivial — and not really a fit activity for intelligent, public-spirited adults."
These incidents show that the idea of separation of church and state no longer means freedom of religion, but freedom from religion.
In other recent incidents, students at a Georgia high school were informed they couldn't wear Fellowship of Christian Athletes T-shirts to school, and in Colorado a public school teacher was forced to remove his Bible from the classroom because his students might see it.
The university community is especially guilty of trivializing faith. On numerous occasions in my academic career I've had professors explain to the class at the beginning of the semester that, "You can hold any point of view you want to hold, but always defend it with sound reasoning. But never use the Bible or any other religious text for your defense."
John Hart is a Shawnee graduate student in Journalism.
In 1993 the Washington Post run a news story that described conservative evangelicals as "largely poor, uneducated and easy to command." The Post did run a correction, but the fact that the original statement passed intact through many layers of professional copy editing reveals a profound prejudice.
The dominant voices in the media, politics, academia and the law not only trivialize religious devotion but also sometimes are outright hostile toward it.
OUT FROM THE CRACKS
By Jeremy Patnoi